The present invention relates to a scanning system, a terminal device and a scanning method and, in particular, relates to, for example, a technology of scanning a character string that is one part of a sentence described in a paper book.
Nowadays, smartphones are widely used. Therefore, as a method of saving the contents of the paper book concerned as electronic data, a method of photographing a paper plane of the paper book by a high resolution camera loaded on the smartphone is generally used. However, when attempting to pick up and save only one specific sentence in sentences on the paper plane, also sentences around one specific sentence are photo-combined simultaneously with photographing of one specific sentence in the above-mentioned method that the camera is used when the paper plane is photographed. Therefore, it is requested to perform work (a trimming process) for removing a useless range in a photographed image after the paper plane has been photographed.
There exist such strong needs that one specific sentence is to be saved as electronic data for reasons, for example, that a reader of the book was impressed with one specific sentence in the sentences. As a technology for coping with the above-mentioned needs, there exists a technology disclosed, for example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-303254.
In Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-303254, there is disclosed the technology of aiming to make data conversion possible between a document and an electronic document by using a simple system. An electronic document operation system disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-303254 includes a pen device and a base unit. The pen device includes three optical sensors (CCD arrays). The first optical sensor is attached to a linear side face of the pen device along the length of the pen device. The second optical sensor is attached to a nib or one side face of the nib of the pen device. The third optical sensor is attached to a rear end part of the pen device. The first optical sensor is used, for example, in order to scan a large part of one page. The second optical sensor is used, for example, in order to discriminate a local content of the document concerned from others by recognizing a mark that has been printed in advance.
The above-mentioned optical sensors are adapted to execute at least Optical Character Recognition (OCR). An output from each optical sensor is transmitted to the base unit by a transmitter of the pen device as a sensor signal. The base unit communicates with the pen device and receives the sensor signal. The base unit executes a hand-written message recognition algorithm by using an auxiliary processor.